Could anybody help a computer illiterate guy with a problem?

[Unholy Birth]

First off, let me start by saying I know almost nothing about computers. If someone could help me with an ongoing issue that's been bothering me for over a year and a half, I would very much appreciate it.

I'll try and keep it short but as detailed as possible. I play Xbox Live, and my connection is terrible. My ISP is Mediacom, I believe they only provide for the midwestern states but I could be wrong. I have the 20 mbps Internet speed, and when doing a speed test I consistently average around 18-19 download and 1.5-2.5 upload. This seems like it should be sufficient to provide outstanding connection to Xbox Live, but that's not the case.

It seems when I play, there is a slight... delay. That's the best way I can word it. Say I come around the corner at the same time as another guy, I always die. When looking back at the Killcam (I play Modern Warfare 2), it seems as though I either take a full 1/4 second to react, or I don't react at all. This is certainly not the case. This problem has caused me quite a bit of grief whenever I play online games, for the past year and a half.

I've tried quite a few things to resolve the problem but nothing seems to work. I have tried portforwarding the Xbox, resetting the router/modem, bypassing the router entirely, etc. Like I said, I don't know much about what to do, so I have not tried anything 'advanced'. I had a guy from Mediacom come out who swapped out my old modem for a new one, which worked wonderfully for 2 days before reverting back to how it was. He told me that it is actually possible to have too much speed. When I do a ping test at pingtest.net, I almost always have at least 1% packet loss, which says can give me a disadvantage in online gaming. Could this be the case? The guy said that he plays Xbox Live and restricts his Xbox to 6 mbps. Could someone tell me how to do this? I have the Netgear WPN824v3 router, and have messed with it for a little while but couldn't find anything to restrict one area.

Sorry for the mass of text... it ended up being longer than I thought it would. Once again, thanks to anyone who reads this and can help me.

 

[patonb]

To limit the speed, theres a section in the router config page, thats called QoS, for quality of service. In there, you can limit the speed of ports and devices. Do a google search for QOS setup Netgear WPN824v3. It'll help more than me.

Not sure if i've ever heard of too much speed... But maybe.

The packet loss is most likely your issue, but could be caused by your isps actual wiring, and equipment.

 

[Unholy Birth]

He compared it to a highway... if there were no speed limits, cars would go too fast and miss their exits. Cheesy I know, but I believed him. Like I said, this issue has been bothering me for well over a year.

I have had Mediacom come out and take a look at the setup. They always say that they can't find anything wrong. I'll try Googling for that QoS setting, thank you for the advice.

What do you think could be causing this packet loss? Is there any setting I should change?

 

[brady]

ok first: Set QoS for Xbox having the highest priority inside your router.

You can setup the Xbox in a DMZ on the router.
Disable NAT and the SPI firewall as well.

Update firmware

 

[Unholy Birth]

In my router, I set the Xbox to the highest priority, but there are around 5 other items in there with the 'highest' priority.

Unfortunately, I don't know what DMZ is. Once again, I am clueless when it comes to computers.

My NAT is open, which I thought was a good thing. What would disabling it do that would help?

What's the SPI firewall? And I am not sure how to update the firmware; will have to look into that.

 

[brady]

move the "5 others" off of the Highest priority in your router.

Open nat is ok, however your router still depends on NAT to address the Xbox.
disabling NAT will simply remove the need to translate between it's name and ip address.
(basically just 1 less thing your router needs to do while forwarding information to the xbox)

Xbox users have noticed improvements when using a DMZ (de-militarized zone)
Basically, your router will assign your xbox 1 ip address for ever... thus removing the need for "NAT".
the router's DMZ will simply assign your xbox and IP address and remove it from it's NAT table

Firewall time: (important and potentially dangerous lol)
To be honest I'll probably skill the "disable" part...

Port Forwarding: Here is a list of a couple ports that should be "open" on the firewall (Router FW)
* TCP 80
* UDP 88
* UDP 3074
* TCP 3074
* UDP 53
* TCP 53

You might also want to check to see if UDP Is enabled by default on your router as well.

 

[Unholy Birth]

Ha, oh man that's a lot. My deepest apologies, I really appreciate the help but I am clueless to what most of that stuff is. I will set it so that the Xbox is the only priority but I honestly don't know how to do the rest.

Also I'd like to stay away from the dangerous stuff unless I know exactly what I'm doing. The last thing I need is to make matters worse.